Wednesday, June 4, 2008

St. Petersburg

Welcome to Day 3 of 'Let's Take a Trip'! We are having great fun traveling to interesting places at home and abroad this week. If you are interested in being a tour guide...simply do a travel post and send me the link (by e-mail or as a comment). I will display all travel links at the bottom of my post every day. Enjoy the tour!

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In 1997, we had the opportunity to visit St. Petersburg, Russia...and what an amazing city that is!

We were on a trip to visit friends in Finland, and (since we were so close) decided to do a three-day cruise to the port of St. Petersburg. I was a little leery about visiting Russia, but thought a tour with a cruise ship would be the safe way to go. We ate and slept on the ship...and all shore excursions were in the company of a tour guide.

It was a most interesting experience from the moment we arrived in port...stern-faced officials seemed to be everywhere, but a shore-side band stood at the end of the pier playing a familiar American anthem.

St. Petersburg is a city of canals...and was built by Peter the Great in 1703.

It is situated on the Neva River, and much of the traffic through the city moves along the water. St. Petersburg was the capital of Czarist Russia from 1712- 1914 and remains the cultural capital even today. It is like a living museum...and has magnificent palaces and cathedrals that are a reminder of it's imperial history.

We toured the city by coach...visiting many of the famous landmarks.

The Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood is a Russian Orthodox cathedral built on the site where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated in 1881...funded primarily by members of the imperial family. Under communism all churches were used by the state for purposes other than worship...and this particular one functioned as a place to store food (hence, it was called the 'Church-of-the-Rotten-Potatoes'). This church contains more than 7500 meters of mosaics...more than any other church in the world. After 27 years of restoration, the building was re-opened to the public the summer that we were there...but is now a museum of mosaic rather than a place of worship.

The Winter Palace was built between 1754 and 1762 as the winter residence of the Russian czars. Catherine the Great was it's first official resident and began acquiring works of art...that marked the beginning of the museum, which is now called The Hermitage. As part of the museum, many of the winter palace's 1057 rooms are open to the public...and what amazed us as we toured this place was the lack of security surrounding the priceless treasures found here.

We visited the spectacular Imperial estate at Peterhof...often called the Summer Palace. It is nestled on the shore of the Gulf of Finland (part of the Baltic Sea), and was built by Peter the Great to rival the famous gardens and buildings of Versailles. Fountains, gardens, statues of gold...and opulence such as we could only have imagined. Despite all the damage during WWII, the building has been totally restored and is beautiful! What struck us as very odd, was that on the courtyard behind the palace was a group of about one hundred young people working at an assembly line, washing and drying dishes by hand.

Tourists come from around the world...are served in the fine dining rooms and coffee shops...and the dishes are washed by hand! I'm afraid that would not pass food safety regulations in our country.

It was great to experience first-hand this wonderful piece of history that is St. Petersburg...the architecture and all the remnants of the past. But a city is made up of the people who live there and we so enjoyed seeing how they live and interacting with them.

Our tour guides were amazing...and told us much about their life. We witnessed a wedding in a downtown park...and simply enjoyed watching the people. Their vehicles and machinery all looked old and out-dated...the common folk lived in grey concrete apartment buildings which left much to be desired. Other than the parks...there were few lawns or flower gardens. The presence of the military at every street corner was somehow less than re-assuring, but the people themselves seemed warm and welcoming.

My grandparents would never have imagined that I would one day be returning to the country that they once called home. In the 1920's they fled from Russia with little more than the clothes on their backs...hoping that they could make a new life for their families where they would be free to love and worship God. Visiting St. Petersburg was a chance of a lifetime...and I'm so glad we took it.

It's somewhat fitting that the beauty of Catherine the Great's time coincided with her inviting our ancestors to move to Russia and live there in peace and freedom - which they did. And then you see the grey, the broken down, the "rotten potatoes" of the 1900's. I'm with you - SO thankful for being able to visit and for our grandparents and parents having been able to leave.

Judy...what beautiful photos...your trip to Russia sounds wonderful...it saddened me about the church ....to think that the people of Russia had their freedom to worship taken away. We are so blessed to worship as we like...

Hey...roots....both sides of my family immigrated from Russia....Great grandparents and and one grandpa...the rest were born here on the prairies. So that was some time ago...still...the family history books show the vital part of the communities they held there as mennonites under Catherine the Great. I would LOVE to go and see Russia...maybe some day! Thanks for sharing...totally beautiful pictures.

After reading the novels by Janice Dick and enjoying them so much. . I have felt interested in seeing Russia. Her books are so wonderful at describing the landscape as it was when my ancestors lived there. Seeing your pictures today only intrigues me further. Someday.Oh .. and I posted our bike trip to Sturgis today .. .

So interesting Judy! My maternal grandmother emigrated from the Ukraine to the USA in the early 1900's and I often think she was so lucky as she surely would have suffered ort died during the world wars.

I would have loved to have gone inside that church and museums to see all the treasures they contained.

We sure have an amazing ancestry don't we? We have lots to be thankful for.Once you start traveling in Europe, it becomes part of your blood. Isn't it disappointing though that there churches are used for tourists but not for worship.That's what hit home for me.This has been fun travelling with you.

Oh, my, what an interesting post and wonderful photos! I can't claim any Russian ancestry, but I've enjoyed reading about the Romanovs over the years, so it was fascinating to see the St. Petersburg sights in your photos!

Hi Judy! I just stumbled upon your blog this morning, and already you've made me incredibly homesick! I'm a "mennonite girl" who is not living near her Mennonite community anymore (got married, moved away, you know the story). My grandparents / father also emigrated from Russia in the mid-1920's. In 1997, I was also in St.Petersburg, finalizing the adoption on our daughter. This was my second trip (I was also there in 1996) and was struck by its beauty, and it's ugliness. It was sad seeing old women sweeping in front of the magnificent churches, and begging for money. It made me very thankful that we live in a country where our elderly don't have to do that!

I haven't had a lot of time to explore your place, but I'm certainly glad I found it.

Welcome here...so glad you stopped by.

Let’s have a cup of coffee together and chat for awhile...mostly about family, friends, food, farming, faith and a few of my favorite pastimes...did I mention travelling? Life itself is a journey...may you find some encouragement here as I share bits and pieces along the way.

I hope you enjoy your visit and welcome your thoughts.

Bless the Lord, O my soul;And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Psalm 103:1

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I live with my husband on a dairy farm in the beautiful Fraser Valley of British Columbia. We enjoy having our grown children and our delightful grands living nearby. I usually have a project or two on the go and the coffee's always on!